Hello! I know it technically hasn’t been a week since NaNoWriMo began. Still, I wanted to update you on my progress and give you insights into some things I’ve also learned so far.
As of this posting, I have written 15,064 words. I’ve been doing my best to write daily for a few hours. Sometimes I can squeeze in an hour; other times, I can do three or more, depending on when I plan to write.
Week One Takeaways
• It’s amazing how much extra time you have to write when you aren’t glued to your phone or tablet, binge-watching a TV show, or doing other unproductive activities. By eliminating these distractions, I could easily find more time each day to write.
• I found writing at night a very productive way to write over multiple days. For example, if I started writing at 11pm on Tuesday and wrote until 1am on Wednesday. I now have written for two hours, but also for two days. This helped keep the daily writing consistent and kept the words flowing.
• Unlike a marathon, it’s okay to leap out of the gate with your writing at full force. If you can write more a day in the first week than the 1,667 words needed to hit 50,000 by the end, do it and keep going. Don’t pull back, and don’t stop once you hit that goal. Eventually, you might hit a creative wall, and those extra words will help you when you do.
• I’m using an outline for my third novel, and I’ve found that what I initially had for the opening once I fleshed it out wasn’t working like I thought it would. No worries. Since your goal is word count, this is a great time to play around and experiment if needed. You can write scenes for your characters that might not end up in the final project but are helping you explore your story and character and increase your word count.
• Even if you write something you don’t like, keep it in for now. Again, while you may be working on a project during NaNoWriMo, your main goal is to hit the magic 50,000-word goal. You can always cut, change, or move things later, but keep writing.
• I have been leaving myself notes in brackets [like these] at the start of each writing session to remind myself of any changes I wish to make to the previous sections I’ve written. That way, I can go back later and fix things.
The main goal is to keep writing and moving forward in your progress. Get through the story from start to finish and edit and change things later.
Keep on writing, and I’ll be back with more updates and maybe an article or two in the next week.
Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!
